Thursday, February 18, 2010

Textbooks, Real Books, Lean Books, Reference Books, Poetry and More !

I thought I was being efficient. I'd use the WorldCat List Maker so we can easily keep track of the books being considered as texts for the Learning Frameworks course. Then MaryAnn told me there were only a few titles on the list. A few titles don't make for a very interesting list.

So I thought about the fact that this class is supposed to be an overture to the CORE. Might this be a place where we could think out loud about some other kinds of readings?

We've talked about the possibility of including some "lean books" so I added some of those to my list. Note especially the Thinker's Guides from the Foundation for Critical Thinking (most are 50 pages or less and can be had for as little as a$1.00 when bought in large lots). And don't overlook their auxiliary web site for improving critical thinking called everyonethinks.org. Can a web site be a text?

I also wondered out loud if we might include some "real books." (memoirs, non-fiction, self-help, etc.) And what about a little poetry?

Remember. We're in brainstorming mode. So (almost) anything goes...

Since I personally would like to see StrengthsQuest included I decided to add a little reference book that would both pay the fee and provide an easy handbook for interpreting results.

There's always discussion of a self-produced book like the one that UNT did for similar course. While desireable, it may not be practical given the timelines we're working with right now.

And last, but certainly not least are those few lonely textbooks whose publishers we will hear from in a few weeks.

If you'd like to look at the entire list you can do that too.

PS. You can add to the list either by emailing the title to me or by becoming a WorldCat member,creating your own list, and using a set of common tags (I suggest two word tags with a hyphen in between). For examples, look all the way to the bottom of my main list.

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